Anna Austin, Ph.D., is a Health Scientist in the Office of Strategy and Innovation within the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In this role, she conducts research at the intersection of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), suicide, and overdose and leads interagency and external partner collaborations focused on trauma-informed care and ACEs prevention. Prior to her role at CDC, Anna was an Assistant Professor at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health where her research focused on social and economic support policies as a strategy for primary prevention of ACEs and on access to opioid use disorder treatment in the Medicaid population within the Medicaid Outcomes Distributed Research Network (MODRN) and among pregnant and parenting people.
State-university partnerships create opportunities for early career researchers to engage in impactful, data-driven policy work that would be difficult to achieve through traditional academic paths alone.